


just put it in drive and go

by TolkienGirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archangel Possession Issues, Episode Tag, Episode: s14e04 Mint Condition, Gen, House Cleaning, Protective Sam Winchester, deserves its own tag, title from Dean's haunting line at the very funny end of the ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24713062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: See, Winchesters don’t do therapy. But Sam’s read a book, here, there and everywhere. He knows the general gist of the self-help touchy-feely crap: own your choices, let go of what you can’t control.Letting an archangel in is an unsavory helping of both.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Lucifer & Sam Winchester, Michael & Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	just put it in drive and go

“Your room is trashed, dude.”

Dean’s whole posture switches in and out of defensiveness, like a stop-motion movie. “Yeah, well I wasn’t planning on anyone else seeing it like this.”

 _It’s not like you_ , Sam thinks, but doesn’t say. Dean, when things are fairly ordinary, is a neat-freak about his spaces. His car. His room. The kitchen. This frat-house sty is basically a festering wound on the bunker’s psyche, and it freaked Sam out enough to find a hunt. Saying _that_ —when they’ve already talked about it—would be one too many salt-lines crossed, as the saying does not go.

Shit, Sam’s tired.

He rubs his wrist over his dry eyes and starts collecting beer cans. Dean throws the checkered insurance-stiff blazer over the back of his chair, then reconsiders.

“Dry-cleaning run, soon?”

“I’d say we’re due. We never dealt with the last batch, before…”

Apocalypse world. Archangels.

Dean-not-Dean.

“Yeah,” Dean says. Dean, who came home in Michael’s five-thousand-dollar tux. “Yeah, the fed suit needs a brush-up. Left elbow’s wearing thin, too. Wonder if they’ll do something about that.”

It takes about half-an-hour of time that Sam could have used for sleeping, but at the end of the half-hour, the place smells less like dirty socks and old cheese.

“You should eat more vegetables,” Sam say, rubbing his greasy fingers together.

Dean winks. “How about apples?”

And yeah, of course, Dean won’t let him forget that so soon. Or ever.

Sam rolls his eyes, but he’s not exactly pissed. They’re making progress, in the way that they do, which is a tango of steps forward and back, forward and back. They just need to be _good_ , the two of them. That’s all. The rest of the world is always going to be screwy.

 _I’m never getting over it. I’m just not_.

Dean stacks one oil-stained pizza box atop another and looks satisfied. “That place in Sweet Home,” he announces. “That’s the one with the superior pepperoni.”

“I will take your word for it,” Sam says. He is thinking, of course, about everything else.

See, Winchesters don’t do therapy. But Sam’s read a book, here, there and everywhere. He knows the general gist of the self-help touchy-feely crap: own your choices, let go of what you can’t control.

Letting an archangel in is an unsavory helping of both.

And maybe that’s Sam—demon-blood addicted, let-me-have-another-round-in-the-cage Sam—but it isn’t Dean.

What’s he thinking of now, folding a heap of (apparently) clean t-shirts, humming to himself?

To Sam’s knowledge, there is only one other time Dean has given in. Given _up_ , in that supreme and total way. Become, by what he considers mindful and memorable choice, a slave to greater powers.

Hell.

Alistair.

Those are old demons, and Dean hasn’t spoken of them in a long time. Sam would never resurrect them; doesn’t blame him for any of that, either.

Being Michael—being the Michael-Sword—well that’s something different. Altogether different. The height of fate and the height of cruelty, to suffer like Dean has suffered, to live as fiercely as Dean has lived, and to be intended for _that_.

Sam would almost choose his dark-sided horrors, would almost be the failure that the world meant _him_ to be, if it could keep Dean from losing the core of himself to the singeing dawn of a new godhead.

“Huh,” says Dean. “Tom and Jerry. Should’ve said that one straight off. You’ve got the guileless grumpiness down.”

“You keep picking combinations that make me the idiot,” Sam retorts. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

“Just testing you, Sparky. Just testing.”

(Yes, Sam would choose.)


End file.
